


James Isn't Stupid

by rageprufrock



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-05
Updated: 2010-01-05
Packaged: 2017-10-05 20:30:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rageprufrock/pseuds/rageprufrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mostly. This may be an exception. (Also known as The Worst Title Pru Ever Came Up With, No, Really.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	James Isn't Stupid

James wasn't stupid, and he was mostly quick. Four weeks, he'd counted. It'd taken him four weeks total to realize what exactly had happened and manage not to yell, "You bloody tart!" at Sirius.

"So someone new, is it?" James said lightly.

Sirius sorted through a stack of files on his desk and talked around the pen in his mouth. "Something like that," he said, distracted. When the papers yielded no satisfaction, he glanced up at James with a curious expression. "Why d'you ask?"

James shrugged, attempting to be nonchalant. "Gillian's been wandering about the office looking red-eyed."

"Oh for--" Sirius frowned and added, "That was one time, months ago."

James narrowed his eyes. "She apparently took it seriously. You were flirting with her for months."

Sirius winced at that. "Right," he said, low, and almost regretful. "Right."

They shuffled through a few more files before Sirius found the one he was looking for and dragged it out of the pile. The movement of his arm pulled the collar of his shirt this way and that and his wide-opened robes gave James a wonderful view a really spectacular love bite on Sirius' collarbone, just high enough to make its presence known if someone was looking -- someone like Gillian.

"You always do this, Sirius," James lectured, Head-Boy mode on full-power, at least twenty-three times more annoying than Remus in the throes of prefecture, since at least no one thought that Remus was a bloody hypocrite when he was lecturing about behaving and kindness toward less fortunate or less talented students. "You're twenty-two years old and you've never dated anyone longer than two months."

Sirius snorted and kept his eyes on his form. He wrote, Transvestite mermen and then paused to glance up at James reproachfully. "As if you've got any right to say that to me, Mister Different Girl Every Week Before Lily And Then After She Rejects Me For Three Years Running." James had the good grace to blush at that. "Besides, this one is different," Sirius added.

James scowled and leaned back in his chair. "They're always different."

Sirius smiled, small and private and to himself, with eyes very far away. "Well, this one is the most different of all."

James cocked his head to one side, and decided to give Sirius the benefit of the doubt. Besides, he'd never seen that smile on Sirius' face when he was talking about one fo his many infatuations before, that had to mean something. Self-righteous as it seemed after years of shameless skirt-chasing, James thought his status as a married man gave him plenty of backing to harangue his friend about his lack of stable relationships.

"Right," James said finally. "So tell me about Miss Different."

Sirius had always had bloody awful handwriting, and so Transvestite mermen attacking cargo ships of womens' clothing came out looking a lot more like Transvestite mermen attacking crack shot women for clods. Not that either variation was any less disturbing.

"You already know them," Sirius said.

That gave James a turn. "What? I already--who?" he demanded.

Sirius sighed and looked up at him with an expression of exasperation. "Do you mind? I've got a lot of work and I don't want Moody riding my arse about this if I don't turn it in on time."

James opened his mouth to talk about how Sirius hadn't even been this shy about his private life before and if he was being quiet about the thing then it had to be serious after all, but he was rudely interrupted when Kingsley Shacklebot poked his head into the room and shouted, "Black!"

Sirius groaned and laid his palms flat on the desk. "What? What is it now? I still smell like dead fish from that last one."

James snickered and Sirius shot James a deeply resentful glare. If there was one thing that Sirius loathed James for doing, James knew, it was being transferred to Auror relations instead of slagging around to one hideous assignment and then the next--time was, James would have smelled like dead fish, too.

"You're safe, for now," Shacklebot said. "Lupin owled, said to tell you he'd be out later and sorry about it."

James watched Sirius' hand tighten along his pen, and the papers wrinkle under his hand. "Oh," Sirius said, too-lightly. "Did the ingrate say where he was off to?"

Kingsley shrugged, and started off. "Mentioned something about tutoring." And then he was gone.

There was something wrong, James deduced, after a solid minute of silence from Sirius. And it wasn't normal, I'm Plotting Something Utterly Despicable silence, either. It was, I'm Deeply Twisted With Neuroses silence, and the latter had never boded well.

"Er, all right there?" James tried, the new girl momentarily discarded from memory--or maybe conjoined to new information.

Which was stupid.

"Nothing," Sirius said in a huff. He glared at his form and said, "Moony's probably out with one of those pretty young students again, eh, Prongs. Ha ha." Sirius wrote, Had to stupefy the goddamn fuckers. It was not, technically, policy to be so forceful in one's reports. "Old Moony," Sirius added, "pretending to want to teach. Just wanted the boys!" He forced another laugh and stabbed at his form so hard the parchment ripped.

James winced.

Maybe not stupid--but too-obvious, and besides which, he and Peter had already asked long ago and Remus had said "no" very firmly.

Then again, he could always ask. James looked at Sirius, who was viciously cursing at his parchment, the mermen in question, and most especially poncy college students and lustful werewolves who didn't know how to keep a date or trousers on--and decided against it.

Sirius and Remus, James thought in awe. It made no sense whatsoever.

Not that he and Lily had, either.

Not that there was even a Sirius and Remus to speak of. For all James knew, Sirius was just overreacting after a bad day.

"He," James started, "he doesn't seem like that type of bloke."

Sirius paused, almost brightened, and looked up at James hopefully. "You think?"

Oh, Christ, James thought. His world was spiraling wildly out of control. Remus was entirely too smart and knew Sirius entirely too well to do something as stupid as shack up with Sirius, though that really wasn't the point considering they'd shacked up right out of Hogwarts. Only--not like that, had it been? Oh, God, James' head was starting to hurt. He had the irrepressible urge to owl Lily and tell her to go to Remus' place of work immediately and slap some sense into him for being so stupid, for--for--right, James calmed himself. Still not proof. Not that there was any proof to be had, as the concept of Remus and Sirius together that way was both horrifying and impossible and Remus had said "no." James would hold him to it.

James nodded. "I think."

The smile on Sirius' face came back, a slow crawl across his lips and he shook his head in a distinctly doglike move. "You're right," Sirius said resolutely. "You're right." Padfoot grinned and looked up at James, paperwork summarily forgotten and said, "So how about it? You and me get a pint?"

James nodded and Sirius grabbed his coat as they set out of the office, the clock's hands on four and eleven as they walked past.

"Was that the date he missed?" James said as they were leaving the Ministry, and started kicking himself for that particular wording.

Sirius grinned ruefully. "Oh, and not the only one," he said. "I don't know what ideas about Moony you're entertaining, but he's a terrible boyfriend."

James tried very hard not to fall over, but the only words that would make it through his brain were BOYFRIEND and LOVE BITE and they danced around madly in capital letters.

And then, while James was cursing Lily in his head because that's why she had been giggling so hard when James had been complaining about Sirius' playboy ways, Sirius said, "Sorry I didn't tell you earlier, mate. Must be a bit of a shock."

James closed his eyes, because BOYFRIEND and LOVE BITE were now in glowing marquee letters, and he was terrified of what he might see if the curtain went up. "Oh, God," he managed.

Sirius looked left and right and said, "I think it's all right."

James said, "What is? This is? You'll leave him in a week." There was accusation heavy in his tone.

"To Apparate. And why does everyone keep saying that," Sirius said in annoyance. "You and Evans share a hive mind."

"Lily knows!" James nearly howled.

Sirius groaned, grabbed James by the scruff of his coat and dragged him into a convenient alleyway as women on the street stared after them in horror.

"Shut the hell up, Prongs!" Sirius instructed. James did. "It's not that big a deal. Besides, you even knew about Remus before I did."

"I'm not the one--" James shut up again. "Lily knew?"

Sirius rolled his eyes. "Everyone knows," Sirius said. "Look, I'm not going to leave him in a week."

James looked resentful. "Maybe two, then."

He couldn't believe this. All of his friends were out to get him, his wife inclusive. How had they simply let this pass under his radar? And after he'd spent the past month wandering around his house like an utterly wanker talking about how he couldn't believe that Sirius had gone through another woman, and when would he learn to settle down and maybe Sirius needed some sort of real change to turn him into a normal human being.

Sirius cuffed him and growled. "This is for real, all right?"

James remembered Sirius saying those same words only twice before: when they'd sworn to be friends, and when he'd apologized that last time to Remus. "This is for real, all right?" Sirius made so few promises, but he tried so hard to keep all of them. Sirius had never said, "This is for real, all right" to any of the girls that he'd dated or had around. Maybe Sirius had never meant it before, or maybe, he hadn't known that he hadn't meant it. But whatever arrangement of factors, this wasn't something--wasn't something James could let go of so easily.

"You're not even gay," James said, last ditch attempt. "And it's Remus. You can't be like you always are."

"I like him," Sirius said, solemn. "And I don't shag and run anyway, James."

"No," James said. "You just hang about until they think you might mean it and then you leave."

Sirius pulled away for a minute, and it took that much for James to see him, really see him, not quite so seventeen and scruffy anymore. Sirius was wearing a scarf and a watch and had a stack of papers under one arm and got a paycheck once a month. He paid rent and James had seem him leave the office in a rush to make sure that he had groceries in the refrigerator before. Sirius drank in moderation and stopped reading the dirty bits of the Quibbler out loud. Sirius had, somehow, grown up, and James hadn't even noticed.

"I'm not going anywhere," Sirius said, very quietly. "I don't want to go anywhere."

James watched him and Sirius looked away, flushing as he murmured again. "I'm not going anywhere."

"I almost believe you," James said, incredulous. "And this is still stupid."

Sirius shrugged and stepped out of the alley, James following closely. "Yeah, probably," Sirius agreed. "You ready to get out of here?"

James scowled. "I'm not all right with this," he warned. "Christ."

"You don't have to be," Sirius said lightly. "Like you said. I'm twenty-two." Sirius flashed him a grin, young, but not quite the same, and James suppressed the protest that was in his throat already. Sirius was right: it wasn't any of his business, and Sirius was, despite the best of James' attempts to believe otherwise, apparently a grown man.

"Oh fine," James conceded. "God."

Sirius perked up at that. "Yes?"

James punched him in the arm, and they Apparated out of the alleyway and into the ether.


End file.
